Online Poll: Should possession of cannabis be legalised?

The Leicester Mercury today launches an online opinion poll asking readers if they support a major overhaul of the country's drugs laws.

Readers are asked whether they believe highly-addictive drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine should be decriminalised.

Readers are being asked if they believe cannabis should be legalised. They are also being asked whether they believe highly-addictive drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine should be decriminalised

They are also being asked if they believe cannabis should be legalised.

Responses to the online poll – on the Mercury's website – will feed directly into a major inquiry being conducted by the Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, and could shape the future of the country's drug laws.

HOW TO VOTE

1. Should possession of cannabis be legalised?

Use the panel on the right of this article to vote on this question.

2. Should possession of drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine be decriminalised?

Comments

WHERE is the 'panel on the right' so that I can vote on this topic?
Anyway...
1/ there is no such thing as an illegal drug!
- The word 'illegal' refers to the fine-able offence committed by a human. Drugs cannot commit an offence as they are not living being and can not pay fines. It's the actions of people that are fine-able when 'illegal'.
2/ it is not a crime to use a drug on yourself!
- Crime refers to a criminal offence of LOSS, DAMAGE or HARM. None of which can be said to be done by an individual with their own consent UNLESS it's solely and specifically done with the intention of committing suicide! Excepts to this are self-mutilations, such as tattoos, piercings etc. These are still considered a criminal offences, though often of a 'mental disorder' type, though these are overlooked if you were to PAY some licenced person to do them to you for a Taxable fee. And that's what all this cannabis thing is about; money! NOT Crime.
3/ it is NOT unlawful to grow/cultivate/harvest or use cannabis. NEVER WAS!
- There is a whole WORLD of difference between Unlawful and illegal. In short, unlawful is a crime that you have no discernible right to do; theft, murder, assault etc illegal refers to those things that you do have a right to do but are offensive to some and so try to make you pay for doing them; primarily with cash otherwise with a custodial sentence but only if you 'understand/stand under' their perception of their taxable unlawful but legal rules.
Funny thing, the Law.

There is a formal e-petition on the HM Government website, petition to legalise cannabis e-petition 29. 22,000 votes so far, 100,000 needed, pass it on :) Your chance to be heard beyond Leicestershire!
Cheers
B

Shows what can happen when you're trying to keep things succinct & simple when your'e tired. I'm not a chemist, I only know that 35 years ago you could find 'stuff' that was strong and good. I rarely indulge these days because most of what I see has an overpowering smell and gives me a headache. Stronger was the wrong word. Thanks for pulling me up!

@GennaX - the increasing potency of Skunk is a complete media fabrication - An FOI request was sent to the home office to verify these claims and the government admitted they have no scientfic data on the potency of Cannabis going back more than a few years so "Skunk is 10X stronger tha what your parents used to smoke" is complete rubbish.
What has happened is the market is being flooded with High THC/Low CBD cannabis that has been cropped early, not flushed properly (to remove growing nutrients), not dried properly & un-cured cannabis as all these would add a couple of weeks to the crop cycle which would reduce the profit & increase the chances of getting caught.
The rest of your conclusions are correct - in an illegal marketplace you get what you're offered and have no idea of what it is or its strength. Contrast this with a coffeeshop in Holland where they have a menu with strain, strength, effects, flavour & can give advice on what your purchasing and the staff know what to do if you "Whitey" (over do it).
My Dutch friends see Cannabis as dull because its available legally & they only have an occasional joint at weekends. They cannot belive how backwards the UK is over "soft drugs" - But then they are also shocked at the drunken behaviour of Brits when they are in Holland.
So if it was legal some of the appeal would disapear & it would be much safer if you did try it.
I thought the MODA-71 was supposed to protect people and reduce harms - it's having the exact opposite effect.

The experiences of the people interviewed in this article make it abundantly clear that it is not smoking cannabis per se that is dangerous - it is the vastly increased strength of the drug today. Making it a legal commodity for adults (with all the necessary safeguards about not smoking in front of children etc) would allow smokers to purchase strengths more suited to their requirements; smokers don't always want the strongest product available contrary to what some would have us believe, as we can see. The mother suggests her daughter only likes the strong stuff, but I doubt she has much choice. Official seizures reveal strength is increasing and buyers have no reliable way of knowing the strength of what they purchase. All this could change if drugs were more liberally regulated.

As 3,000,000 plus people use weed regardless of if being legal or not.
What would you rather do -
Buy doddgy weed from a criminal with other drugs available knowing the money is funding criminal gangs, trafficing, prostitution, terrorism etc.
Buy quality controlled weed with health warnings from the government knowing the tax is funding the NHS and paying off the national debt.
It just needs the government to ignore the "Daily Mail" and stop taking bribes from big pharma & the alcohol industry.

I can't believe it's 2012 and people still bring forth the same mis-informed, 'Reefer madness' points.
Of course it should be legalised. There is no reason - health related, societally, or any other that someone can care to think of that it shouldn't be.
It would save money for the police and courts in massive amounts, when they don't have to spend precious man hours and resources (which are being reduced drastically) chasing and prosecuting people for smoking a plant, which harms no one and is generally done for people to relax, have a bit of a laugh and enjoy themselves. People aren't in the city centre vomiting all over the streets and kicking each other's heads in because they've been smoking cannabis.
And if it was eventually legalised entirely, then it would actively generate a lot of money that could be distributed to be spent on good things for society as a whole (In an ideal world anyway.) People wouldn't have to go through dealers or other elements that they might find uncomfortable. People who don't want to do it, still wouldn't have to and people who do could get it and know the exact strain they were getting.
The only reason people see it as seedy is precisely because it has been prohibited and criminalised. Do you think gangsters in 1930's Chicago and the like were killing each other and blowing things up when alcohol was legal? The prohibition of alcohol at that time led to those things, not the substance itself.

While politicians are buying up all the shares in GW Pharma who make sativex out off illegal skunk cannabis we will never see change . Politicians are quite happy to line their own pockets while they waste billions of our tax payer cash to fight drugs . You would think after 40 years off not meeting one of their targets and even seeing a massive increase in drug use a different way would have been tried by now .
Ill put it a simple way - If prohibition was an NHS policy it would have been scrapped long ago as a waste off time and tax payer cash .

And here's some NHS statitics for the "cannabis sends you mad" brigade to chew on...
Hospital Episode Statistics. Count of finished admission episodes (FAE) with a primary diagnosis of mental and behavioural disorders due to use of cannabinoids (ICD10 code F12) and alcohol (ICD10 code F10)
Cannabinoids (F12)
2009-10 713
2010-11 799
Alcohol (F10)
2009-10 47,402
2010-11 47,287
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The NHS Information Centre for health and social care.
There are three million regular users of cannabis (Atha et al 2011) and 31 million regular users of alcohol (NHS Information Centre 2009). Therefore alcohol use is six times more likely to result in admission for mental and behavioural disorders.
CBD - a constituent of Cannabis is actually an anti-pyschotic substance. If you don't believe me checkout the GW Pharmacuticles website - they grow Tonnes of Skunk cannabis at Portland down, grind it up, disolve it in alcohol add peppermint flavoring and sell it as Sativex at over £150 a bottle to the NHS. Talk about money for old rope.
http://tinyurl.com/bmurb4n
Which proves cannabis in the hands of big business is perfectly safe and very profitable indeed.
Don't forget that Cannabis is a schedule 1 drug (of no medicinal use) so how come they have an exclusive license to distribute something that has no medicinal use was issued. I smell a big conspiracy.
Lobbying? Bribes? or just political corruption? Answers Please Mr Vaz.